


The Centre Cannot Hold

by LadyLuckDoubt



Category: Gyakuten Saiban | Ace Attorney
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Gen, Phoenix Wright Kink Meme, Short, disbarred!Phoenix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-03
Updated: 2013-01-03
Packaged: 2017-11-23 12:38:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/622218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyLuckDoubt/pseuds/LadyLuckDoubt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Anon here is a first time requestor. Can anon get a fic with some Phoenix angst? Any situation is fine.</i>
</p><p>A fairly vague prompt, but Phoenix!angst always steers me to one thought: "There can't have been much worse that happened to the guy than him losing his badge and his entire identity after what happened preceding GS4." (And then there's seven years of revenge and paranoia and sleeping-with-the-enemy awesomeness which would put your average soap opera to shame.)</p><p>Ahem. Yes. Basically it is what was asked for: Phoenix angst. If it's not clearly obvious by now, there are some vague spoilers for 4-4, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Centre Cannot Hold

A stupid slip of the tongue, evidence presented, a premature smug grin, and then the devastating blowback.  
  
That's how it went, and in the initial moments after the trial, that's all he remembers it as, barely registering the details. They got lost... in noise and panic and smoke.  
  
But now it's after the hearing, and he's sitting, alone, the realisation having sunken in. It's the first time he's felt so  _empty_  in a long time: prior to this it was embarrassment and then came the fighting urge to clear his name--  _Yes, Your Honor, I made a very foolish mistake--_  and-- now this.  
  
It's over.   
  
The badge which he was so accustomed to, yet so unaware of most of the time is noticeable because of its absence; suck a small thing makes his jacket feel weightless; moments ago, he was Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney, and now he's some guy in a blue suit. Worse than that: he's Phoenix Wright,  _Former_  Attorney. There's a tight feeling in his chest and a lump in his throat. He won't cry. He can't cry. Even though the words of his mentor, from  _her_  mentor, and probably from _his_  mentor, occur to him: "The only time a lawyer can cry is when it's all over." He wants to cling to it, to somehow stop it from being all over. But he can't.   
  
He can cry another time; crying feels awkward and he's spent so long refusing to believe it's ever all over; simple release like that is no longer natural for him.  
  
 _This is probably what happened to Edgeworth_ , he thinks vaguely when he realises the abnormality of it,  _It just happened to him when he was a lot younger than me._  
  


Thinking about Edgeworth only makes him feel worse: he'd told his tentative love interest that he was heading out to a disbarment hearing. Edgeworth had assumed that it had been someone  _else's_ \-- maybe Kristoph Gavin's. Somehow, in the last few days, Edgeworth had been busy with his own work, returning home late-- there hadn't been time for a goodnight kiss and a cup of tea let alone a discussion about their respective workdays-- and Edgeworth never once turned on the television or opened a newspaper. He'd assumed that the hearing was benign rather than about Phoenix. And Phoenix, not wishing to worry him, had allowed him to think that.   
  


Fear races through him: he can't find the words to tell Edgeworth what's happened. Because Edgeworth will worry, or Edgeworth will be furious that he didn't say something earlier. And Edgeworth will find out. Another thing to worry about.  
  
It's as though every aspect of his life has been ripped to shreds with the force of a hurricane. The problems and their trickle-down effects start occurring to him: without paying work, he won't be able to afford his apartment; without the apartment he won't have anywhere to live-- or anywhere to invite Edgeworth over to-- and without an apartment it's going to be hard to find work. He needs an address, and LA is his home-- Mom and Dad moved interstate years ago and he has no desire to head to Florida. No desire, and nothing to do there, no more opportunities than he has here.   
  
It's a hollow, terrifying thought.

 

He feels sick and for some reason he's shivering as though cold; it's like that time the truth about Dollie was revealed; that took a while to sink in, too, but this time the heartbreak is worse. Dollie appeared and attached to him in a bizarre whirlwind kind of way, Dollie was a hologram relationship, and at least afterwards there'd been the knowledge that none of it had really been real anyway. The sobering and draining reality of this, though, is that it's very real, and that it was his lifetime dream, his one ambition, and it's now ruined through his own stupidity.   
  
  
When he arrives home at the cosy little apartment which he knows won't be his for much longer, he just wants comfort. He wants Edgeworth to hold him, he wants Maya to turn up at the door and distract him by suggesting they go out for burgers, he wants Larry to be sitting on his sofa complaining about how the TV reception at his place sucks, to which Phoenix will ask why he's not watching TV in his own apartment, to which Larry will give some hard-on-his luck story, complete with melodramatic tears, about why he couldn't pay the bill and how his electricity was cut off.   
  
 _That's going to be me, soon, Larry._    
  
There is no tea brewing, no phone ringing, no bath run for him when he arrives home. He lies on the sofa, idly flicking through the TV channels, hoping he can at least appreciate something the idiot box has to offer before it becomes just like his status as a lawyer-- another thing he had until he fucked up.   
  
He wants to sob, but he can't. The lump's still in his throat and he's freezing. He wishes he remembered how to reach out to people, to say "Help," but he forgot how to do that. Somehow, if he needed help, others came to him with almost psychic awareness.   
  
Like Edgeworth did after that Hazakura situation.   
  
 _How am I going to tell him about this?_  The prospect horrifies him and he's unsure what is going to come next. Will Edgeworth want to associate himself with a  _disbarred_  lawyer? Probably not: Edgeworth is clever and professional and--   
  


It's then when he realises that he's started thinking of himself like that. A has-been, another  _was_  like what the TV and the apartment will be in a few months when the landlord and the electrical company realise that he's just another fraud and a writeoff and a loser who can't pay the bills. Edgeworth is smarter, though, Edgeworth will realise that well before they do, and Edgeworth will have the sense to leave and find someone else: perhaps some glamourous statesman from Cohdopia or wherever he'd disappeared to last time. Phoenix has seen the photos of Edgeworth looking stiff and formal around law enforcement types, politicians and that perky teenage girl who made Maya's dress sense look perfectly ordinary. He'd felt a pang of jealousy at Edgeworth having had so much experience abroad when he hadn't even been invited. ("You were probably busy with Maya and Pearl when they came down to visit from Kurain," he's said, but there was a part of him that wanted to point out that even if Edgeworth hadn't enjoyed Gatewaterland, he'd have likely enjoyed the luxury hotel they'd stayed in...) And he'd noticed, with green-eyed jealousy-- the sparkling, flirtatious grin on that green-eyed senator's-- or whatever the hell he was-- face. He'd teased Edgeworth about finding a sugar daddy.   
  
And now, that could become a horrible reality.   
  
There are no tears from him: his body feels like white noise, his ears feel blocked-- nothing can hit him too hard or overwhelm him in the way that the finality of what happened this afternoon has.   
  
He wants a phonecall. He does not get one.

 

He is, and until he works out how to tell the others-- and he can't, because he already hates himself enough and having people  _pity_  him will only be another blow to his fragile self-esteem and identity-- entirely alone. And he knows that this time there will be no chance to turn anything around, this time there will be no sidekick helping him out or a strange, serious boy fighting for him because it's the right thing to do, because he screwed up.   
  
Because he's stupid and a loser and Klavier Gavin, that darling baby prosecutor with the silver spoon in his mouth and the Coolest Defense in the West for a big brother-- needed to be blooded on someone who was on his way out, something obselete. A  _has been_.

  
He dreamed of being a lawyer. He never dreamed of becoming outdated, a write-off, disposable and useless because of one stupid little mistake. He wants to argue to himself that it's unfair, that others have remained lawyers when they've gotten away with worse, but he can't even muster up that much. They were right. Kristoph Gavin, despite his cool professional defense-- was actually wrong-- kind, but wrong to have stood by him.   
  
He worries about Kristoph Gavin vaguely: will the man want payment for his services? How will he manage that? Or was payment already making a fool of himself in front of his darling little brother?  
  


 

He longs to calm himself, to wait for a phone call in case one will come, something soothing and familiar and distracting. Not getting one, he reaches under the small coffee table, rummaging through the wicker basket where the TV guide and remotes live, bored and pathetic. His fingers happen upon a distraction: a bottle of red wine Edgeworth brought over last week when he'd supplied the dinner. The wine had been forgotten.   
  
He's not going to bother with a glass; it's only him in the living room anyway, and there is something so suited to the mood about drinking from a bottle of expensive red wine.   
  
 _Enjoy this, Wright, because it's probably going to be your last_. He gulps from the bottle, throwing it back, tilting his head backwards. Does alcohol have the ability to numb or to bring out emotions?   
  
  
  
By the time he's finished two thirds of it, he's close to sleep and the tears threaten to come forth with the impending concern about what tomorrow will bring, what he will do now that his identity has been torn from him by his own idiotic and unwitting self-destruction, just like his badge.   
  
But the phone hasn't rung.   
  
There's no comfort, no support, and he's forgotten to know how and when to ask for help. And it's too late to try and relearn it.   
  
The rest of his life starts now; he's alone, he's nothing, and he has a bottle in his hand.   
  
Tomorrow a whole new world awaits him. One he's no longer sure he knows how to live in.

**Author's Note:**

> I am a complete sucker for Phoenix!angst, especially if it's focussed around the events of GS4. I realise a lot of Phoenix's adventures have resulted in angst: he's lost a lot over the years and been under all kinds of pressure, while being treated like he's a piece of crud by just about everyone and every thing (including within his field itself where lawyers seem to have an even worse reputation than they do in the real world!)-- but my headcanon can't quite believe he's in enormous amounts of pain there: his job means a lot to him and forms a huge part of his identity. No matter what happens, he never loses that desire to fight for what's right and keep on kicking arse for the underdog. 
> 
> And then, through someone else's nastiness, and, let's face it, his own reckless cock-up, he loses his badge. And that's gotta hurt. A lot. Probably more than anything else has, because no matter how bad things were before, he could use his lawyer skills to fix what was wrong. And now he can't... and that's gotta be crippling and depressing in a huge way.


End file.
